D&D General No More "Humans in Funny Hats": Racial Mechanics Should Determine Racial Cultures

[theCourier]

There need only be three:

Humans, Fungoids, and Lizardfolk

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It depends on the culture, the situation, and if you are a specific type of human (Dragonmarked, for example). City humans (Waterdhavian humans) would approach a situation differently from a Barbarian Tribe of humans, and they would approach it differently from a Pastoral Settlement of humans. It's hardest with humans, because humans are extremely diverse and don't have racial features that could help with this. Basically, any type of culture in the real world can exist in a fantasy world, and there are a ton of different human cultures and they all react in different ways.

Say, it's a drought. Waterdhavian humans would be more likely to demand their city leaders to do whatever they could to get through the drought, while a Barbarian Tribe would be more likely to just move to a different area that has more water, while a Pastoral Settlement of humans would probably just try to weather through it. If it was a war, the Waterdhavian humans would probably be well sheltered from the war by their city guards and troops, while the Barbarian Tribes would probably resort to guerilla warfare and the rite of champion combat, and the Pastoral Settlement would have to ask their nation's leaders to send troops to help them.

These are all generalities and can get more in-depth when you get more specific about the setting, but basically, you answer this as "how would humans of a similar cultural group in the real world react to this scenario, or a real-world equivalent of this fantasy scenario".

People are individuals, not cultures. I could leave a dozen scousers with an old car and only eleven of them would steel the wheels and leave it stacked on bricks.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It is not a problem, I just disagree that humans and fantasy races should be treated differently. If you want mechanics to determine cultures then mechanics should determine all cultures IMO. So each race should have multiple cultures, or really culture should be separated from the race and applied on top of the race. Actually, I think that is how LevelUp is doing it.

To do what you want in a practical way, you would actually have to separate race and culture. Otherwise, making every race nuanced and multicultural would inflate the page count beyond any reasonable publishing limits.

Of course, defining monocultures for race (while allowing for individual exceptions) has been the general rule in RPGs, and indeed most of fiction, for a reason. And that reason was not laziness or a lack of sophistication. There comes a point where you create so many combinations that it becomes difficult to identify archetypes, and archetypes are very helpful if you want something to be memorable and easy to understand.

 

[dave2008]

To do what you want in a practical way, you would actually have to separate race and culture. Otherwise, making every race nuanced and multicultural would inflate the page count beyond any reasonable publishing limits.

To be clear, this is not what I want - it was just for arguments sake. But I think I would agree that the best method is to separate race and culture (like LevelUp is doing).

 

[doctorbadwolf]

To do what you want in a practical way, you would actually have to separate race and culture. Otherwise, making every race nuanced and multicultural would inflate the page count beyond any reasonable publishing limits.

Of course, defining monocultures for race (while allowing for individual exceptions) has been the general rule in RPGs, and indeed most of fiction, for a reason. And that reason was not laziness or a lack of sophistication. There comes a point where you create so many combinations that it becomes difficult to identify archetypes, and archetypes are very helpful if you want something to be memorable and easy to understand.

Elven societies tend to lionize the wise and subtle, more than the strong and brash.

Dwarven societies tend to value the family unit more than the individual, especially Mountain Dwarf cultures.

Dwarven diasporas tend to artificially pack into crowded enclaves full of clever uses of space, making for quite small but surprisingly comfortable homes where the sounds of one’s family are never far away. Most dwarves grow irritable or even dispondent if forced to go long periods without the company of kin, born or chosen, and diaspora dwarves that don’t live in an enclave will often “adopt” the family of a close friend, keeping regular contact, taking their friend’s children as apprentices, or acting as patrons for the ventures of these chosen kinfolk.

All of those can describe many cultures, but they help inform what kinds of cultures tend to arise, and what disparate cultures will tend to have in common.

etc.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

People are individuals, not cultures. I could leave a dozen scousers with an old car and only eleven of them would steel the wheels and leave it stacked on bricks.

I am aware that people are individuals, not cultures. I was talking about how a culture, in large, would respond to different circumstances.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I am aware that people are individuals, not cultures. I was talking about how a culture, in large, would respond to different circumstances.

Way to miss the point.

My point is, my joke is offensive to people from Liverpool. The only reason I can make it is because I am from Liverpool. Making generalisations about how people behave based on their background is ALWAYS OFFENSIVE. It doesn't matter if you think it is true or not, it is still offensive. All barbarians are stupid. Everyone with a noble background horsewhips peasants. Don't go there, it's not a good look.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Way to miss the point.

My point is, my joke is offensive to people from Liverpool. The only reason I can make it is because I am from Liverpool. Making generalisations about how people behave based on their background is ALWAYS OFFENSIVE. It doesn't matter if you think it is true or not, it is still offensive. All barbarians are stupid. Everyone with a noble background horsewhips peasants. Don't go there, it's not a good look.

Big disagree. Generalizations are a highly useful tool when working with fictional cultures. You don't always have the time, inclination or page count (if publishing) to do a fully fleshed out writeup for every culture in your setting, and having a kind of behavioral short hand is a good way to give yourself and any potential readers an idea of what to expect without going into exhaustive detail. Naturally if you were going to focus on that area in gameplay you could then flesh the culture out, and naturally any individuals that you meet from that culture will be different on an individual basis. That doesn't make generalizations less useful as a starting point.

Where it can be offensive is where you start trying to shortcut your way through the creative process by using a real world culture as a baseline and then making generalizations about that. But that's entirely because you are then proxy generalizing real people. Fictional people only have the emotions you attribute to them.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Where it can be offensive is where you start trying to shortcut your way through the creative process by using a real world culture as a baseline and then making generalizations about that. But that's entirely because you are then proxy generalizing real people. Fictional people only have the emotions you attribute to them.

It doesn't matter if your fictional people do not resemble real world people or not, they point is, you are saying "you can make generalisations about people based on their culture/background/occupation and they hold true".

Find a better way to write.

 

[Scars Unseen]

It doesn't matter if your fictional people do not resemble real world people or not, they point is, you are saying "you can make generalisations about people based on their culture/background/occupation and they hold true".

Find a better way to write.

I literally did not say that. Don't put words in my mouth.